Wednesday, 1 April 2015

A foolish stunt by the Daily Telegraph and 103 Tory company leaders has backfired,
with business chiefs now facing calls for a boycott of their companies from angry
voters.

Marcus Williamson, editor of www.ceoemail.com, a consumer information website, has
created a list of the 103 Tory suppoters who signed the Telegraph letter, together
with email contact details for many of them. The list can be found here:

Although the Telegraph claims that these people are supporting the Conservative
Party in a personal capacity, they are blurring the lines by using their high
profiles in companies to try to add gravitas to their Tory support.

Companies are not able to vote and companies are not affected by the worst of the
Tory policies, such as benefits cuts, privatisation of the NHS and running down of
local services. In fact, many of these policies - such as NHS privatisation,
"workfare", and allowing zero-hours contracts - are there for the advantage of
companies, not individual voters.

Williamson says "Business people should stay out of politics" and adds "They
should have already learnt lessons from the referendum on Scottish independence.
The CBI tried to interfere and got it wrong. These people should realise that it's
foolish to mess with the electorate when their business is at stake."

"I am urging people to now boycott these companies to send a message to their
directors and owners to say why they are doing so."

Wednesday, 4 March 2015

The energy regulator Ofgem has imposed a sales ban on ScottishPower, preventing it from proactively pursuing any new business for a period of twelve days.

The ban follows criticism from the regulator over ScottishPower's poor performance in a number of key areas. In November last year Ofgem issued a notice requiring the company to reduce call waiting times, promptly repay in-credit balances and act to immediately implement all decisions by the Ombudsman. Ofgem set a final deadline for compliance by the end of January, at the latest.

The ScottishPower Chief Executive, Neil Clitheroe, apologised to customers at the time, saying he would provide his "... personal assurance that we will do what we can to correct every problem, pay appropriate compensation and ensure that no customer is disadvantaged."

Ofgem had promised to take decisive action against the company if it failed to act appropriately, saying "Each month ScottishPower will publish its progress towards these commitments on its website. If it misses any of its targets its proactive sales activities will instantly be suspended." ScottishPower, which has around 5.2 million customers, had until the end of January to comply with all the Ofgem instructions and resolve the problems, which it blamed on the introduction of a new billing system.

Ofgem dithering

But it then took Ofgem more than a month to determine whether ScottishPower had complied with the requirements. In the meantime, ScottishPower had introduced a new energy tariff and was still selling to new customers whilst not resolving the outstanding issues.

Today's decision is based on the company not clearing the backlog of cases where the energy Ombudsman has made a decision but the company has not acted. More than 2500 such cases were identified and closed during November. The regulator took action because 30 cases had been incorrectly closed, where work was still required by ScottishPower to resolve outstanding issues.

Two minutes or five minutes?

While Ofgem says that the two minute call waiting target has been met, ScottishPower's own website said yesterday that call waiting times are five minutes. And although overdue bills have been reduced, many thousands of people are still waiting for refunds from closed energy accounts and overpayments.

Responding to the Ofgem announcement, ScottishPower's chief executive of retail, Neil Clitheroe, said in a statement "We are all fully committed to delivering continued service improvements, return to the high service standards long associated with ScottishPower and ensure that our customers realise the very real benefits of our IT system investment."

Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: "Customers of Scottish Power are still waiting for them to clean up their act. The poor service provided to many consumers with billing issues has turned initial errors into ongoing misery. The sales ban from regulator must now spur Scottish Power into action to ensure a corner is turned.

Is 12 days enough?

Asked whether she believed 12 days would be enough to resolve the company's poor customer service, Sarah Harrison, Ofgem's senior partner in charge of enforcement, told me: "We're investigating ScottishPower for poor customer service. We will be conducting an independent audit. The investigation continues. "